But old lady Powell, apparently dozing in her chair on the opposite side of the fire was building a double air-castle. She said to herself that Peter's little green cottage would suit the young preacher and his bride very well, if its master should come to Benvenew to live. Nothing was more likely. And Amanda and Peter would just hit it off together. Everybody could see that. It was perfectly plain. A HALT AT DAWN[3] MARGARET DANVERS stepped aboard the southern-bound sleeper at Chicago one stormy March evening, and as she walked composedly to her berth in the middle of the car, the eyes of every person present were riveted upon her. She wore a closely fitting garment of Russian sable, which enveloped her completely, and a large beaver hat with drooping plumes, and from the single fine diamond flashing at her throat to the tips of her dainty Suéde boots she looked the model of a fashionable beauty. She was the only woman on the car, and before she had fairly settled herself comfortably, all the men had mentally pronounced their opinion of her looks and style, and hazarded a conjecture as to her age. Her attendant, a florid man of middle age, received the slight degree of attention justified by his seeming only an adjunct of the moment. As he left her, he put into her hands a bunch of costly roses, which she received with a smile and laid upon the opposite seat the instant he was gone. Of the score of passengers, two or three knew her by sight, for she was, in a way, a public character, but, as it happened, none were really acquainted with her, and before long even those most deeply interested in her appearance yielded to the apathy peculiar to sleeping-cars, and subsided into their newspapers or their rugs, preparing to wear out the evening until bedtime. Margaret amused herself in watching the flying snow and in reverie. Too used to traveling to even care to look about her, she yielded to the prevailing somnambulistic influence just enough to dream without sleeping. At first there was in her mind a confusion of events past, present, and to come. Incidents of no importance mingled with greater ones, and her reflections became mixed with little fanciful suggestions of things long since forgotten, or, rather, voluntarily put out of mind. She tried to think of her career, to recall her triumphs, and to dwell upon the possibilities of the future. She told herself that music was her life, that all she had to do with was the beautiful and the divine in art, and that the everyday existence she had struggled to rise above was henceforth nothing more than an unpleasant memory.